I was pleased to see the formal announcement yesterday of the OpenSAF Foundation, a new open source project that I've been helping form for the past several months. You can find the the launch press release here, and I've also pasted it in at the end of this blog entry for archival purposes. The Web site for OpenSAF is here.
Here are the high level details, from the press release:
This organization is created to promote the development and adoption of an open source implementation of a high availability base platform middleware based on Service Availability™ Forum Specifications. The OpenSAF Foundation leverages the collective expertise of the telecom and enterprise computing industries to create a best-of-breed implementation. This open source project uses the widely accepted LGPLv2.1 license (Lesser GNU Public License). Membership in the foundation is open to all organizations interested in the development and broad adoption of the OpenSAF code base.The goals of the OpenSAF Foundation include evolving a broadly adopted base platform middleware not tied to any commercial implementation. This includes support for the SA Forum™ Application Interface Specification and alignment with the requirements of the SCOPE Alliance. Additional services will be developed that may be leveraged by enterprise computing companies, network equipment providers, industries requiring high availability, and independent software vendors.
As you can see, OpenSAF is an implementational chicken to an already existing, open standard egg developed by the Service Availability Forum, as well as a continuing buildout of an important telecommunications system where other organizations (such as the SCOPE Alliance) are already active. The need to create such interdependent organizations working on a collaborative, additive basis is increasingly important in today's converged and expanding, telecom and Internet based world.
Yesterday’s announcement is actually the culmination of a process that began just under a year ago, when Motorola. That was followed by the announcement by Motorola on June 28 of last year that it would help form what is now OpenSAF Foundation. The June 29 announcement included the following:
Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced that it intends to form an industry-wide consortium that will assume stewardship for the OpenSAF(TM) project the company announced in February. The company also announced the first release of the open source code related to the project. The consortium also will manage any future development of the OpenSAF code base. Leading companies including Ericsson, HP and Nokia Siemens Networks have expressed support for this initiative.
The open source project will establish a broadly adopted high availability operating environment that can be leveraged by computing technology companies, network equipment providers (NEPs) and other industries requiring high availability. Independent software vendors (ISVs) will be able to use OpenSAF as a benchmark for creating highly available applications. OpenSAF includes an implementation of the Service Availability(TM) Forum Application Interface Specification (AIS).Details of the OpenSAF code release and additional information on the OpenSAF initiative can be found at www.opensaf.org.
As an open source project, OpenSAF has no dependencies on specific vendors’ products and support plans and future enhancements will be directly determined by the users of, and contributors to, the OpenSAF project. Adopting OpenSAF will enable more efficient use of in-house software engineering resources, and additional tools will be provided to enable application development and deployment services.
The OpenSAF code has been available as a free download since then.
While yesterday’s press release talks a lot about the founding companies, this is a true open source project, supported rather than tightly controlled by the corporate members that will be paying the bills. You can find the Operating Procedures and Technical Operating Procedures here and here, and finally the Individual Participation and Contribution Agreement here. (Motorola, which contributed the original code upon which the Foundation’s implementation will be based, contributed that code under a similar license). That agreement is modeled very closely on the Apache agreement. I think that this structure will work very well.
Finally, you can see architectural diagrams for where the implementation will live in this article at LinuxDevices.com.
It’s always a nice day when a new organization I helped form leaves the nest, and I’ll look forward to working with it in the future. Perhaps some of you will, too.
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Leading Telecommunications and Enterprise Computing Companies Form OpenSAF
Emerson Network Power, Ericsson, HP, Nokia Siemens Networks and Sun Microsystems join forces to support Service Availability Middleware based OpenSAF Project
Danville CA –22nd January 2008 – Leading telecommunications and enterprise computing companies today announced the formation of the OpenSAF Foundation. This organization is created to promote the development and adoption of an open source implementation of a high availability base platform middleware based on Service Availability™ Forum Specifications. The OpenSAF Foundation leverages the collective expertise of the telecom and enterprise computing industries to create a best-of-breed implementation. This open source project uses the widely accepted LGPLv2.1 license (Lesser GNU Public License). Membership in the foundation is open to all organizations interested in the development and broad adoption of the OpenSAF code base.
The goals of the OpenSAF Foundation include evolving a broadly adopted base platform middleware not tied to any commercial implementation. This includes support for the SA Forum™ Application Interface Specification and alignment with the requirements of the SCOPE Alliance. Additional services will be developed that may be leveraged by enterprise computing companies, network equipment providers, industries requiring high availability, and independent software vendors.
“As a leading provider of telecom equipment and services our continued support of the OpenSAF project shows our commitment and belief that the SA Forum is the way forward for future telecom service/multimedia applications,” said Håkan Eriksson, Chief Technology Officer, Ericsson. “The re-launch under LGPLv2.1 and the formation of the foundation provides a stable environment for third-party products developers to understand the importance and value in supporting OpenSAF based products for the future.”
“We see customer demand growing significantly for open, standards-based solutions in the telecommunications industry,” said Christine Martino, vice president, Telecom Platforms, HP. “Our recent efforts to bring the latest in blade server innovation to the telecom market demonstrate HP’s leadership and commitment to carrier-grade Linux advancement, and we will continue to drive and support carrier-grade Linux and OpenSAF on HP platforms moving forward.”
“As a founder of Service Availability Forum and the SCOPE Alliance, we view the OpenSAF Foundation as an extension of our ongoing efforts not only to accelerate the deployment of carrier-grade base platforms but also to advocate the availability and implementation of an open source operating environment”, stated Stephan Scholz, Chief Technology Officer, Nokia Siemens Networks. “As a newly merged entity, Nokia Siemens Networks believes this is the right time for us to extend our commitment to this initiative as it supports our strategic priorities.”
“Sun Microsystems, as a provider of Carrier Grade commercial off the shelf solutions, has a long history of helping the telecommunications industry accelerate their migration from proprietary technology with solutions based on open standards and open source middleware is an important part of the evolution,” said Dr. Tim Marsland, Sun Fellow, vicepresident and CTO, Software at Sun Microsystems. “Sun has long been committed to open source technologies such as Java, OpenSolaris, GlassFish, Sailfin, to name a few, and we believe the telecommunications industry is poised to embrace an open source implementation of the SAF framework as a next step in the development and adoption of open source Carrier Grade solutions.”
“The formalization of the OpenSAF foundation marks our ongoing commitment to establish a strategic team of leading communications and computing companies to assume stewardship for the project and drive any future developments of the OpenSAF code base,” said Stephen Dow, president of the Embedded Computing business of Emerson Network Power. “Moving forward, Emerson Network Power will continue to actively contribute to the project and the source code will be available for a broad range of our AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA-based platforms.”
“The SA Forum™ welcomes all implementations of its specifications and a project such as OpenSAF provides opportunities for mutual collaboration on the specification implementation,” said Asif Naseem, SA Forum™ president. “We hope that feedback from such collaboration will provide important input into our specification development process.”
“The OpenSAF Foundation will provide a forum for the implementation and testing of Carrier Grade Base Platform Middleware that focuses on the priorities and gaps identified by the SCOPE Alliance. Conducting these activities in an open environment such as OpenSAF is very conducive to rapidly converging on standard solutions to common problems” commented Paul Steinberg, Chairman of the SCOPE Alliance.
About OpenSAF
OpenSAF is an open source project established to develop a base platform middleware consistent with Service Availability Forum ™ (SA Forum) specifications, under the LGPLv2.1 license. The OpenSAF Foundation was established by leading Communications and Computing Companies to facilitate the OpenSAF Project and to accelerate the adoption of the OpenSAF code base in commercial products. The OpenSAF project was launched in mid 2007 and has been under development by an informal group of supporters of the OpenSAF initiative.
About the Service Availability Forum™
The Service Availability Forum™ (SA Forum™) is a consortium of industry-leading communications and computing companies working together to foster an ecosystem that enables the use of commercial off-the-shelf building blocks in the creation of high availability network infrastructure products, systems and services. To achieve this goal, the SA Forum™ develops and publishes high availability and management software interface specifications while promoting and facilitating their adoption by industry. SA Forum™ membership offers the opportunity to help frame and implement the Service Availability solution. For more information, visit www.saforum.org.
About the SCOPE Alliance
The SCOPE Alliance is an industry group committed to accelerating the deployment of carrier grade base platforms for service provider applications. Its mission is to help, enable and promote the availability of open carrier grade base platforms based on Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) hardware / software and Free Open Source Software (FOSS) building blocks. In addition, the objective is to promote interoperability among these components to better serve Service Providers and consumers.
The SCOPE Alliance complements the work of industry initiatives such as the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group, Service Availability Forum, Linux Foundation and others that have successfully created high quality, open specifications that enable the creation of carrier grade base platforms. The alliance creates profiles that enable and encourage the use of COTS and FOSS building blocks based upon open specifications developed by these industry groups. The SCOPE Alliance focuses on the existing open specifications it believes best meet the needs of Service Providers and identifies areas where additional specification work is needed. For more information, visit www.scope-alliance.org.
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